Open Letter from an SLV Resident

[The following accounts were forwarded to me by a San Luis Valley resident who, like many SLV residents, has experienced many unusual events while living in this “mysterious” valley. These witness accounts are typical of hundreds of stories I have heard and collected over the years, but unfortunately, there are no dates associated with these accounts so they cannot be included in my SLV Event Log. As you will see, her stories are compelling and I include them here at Our Strange Planet (OSP) to give you the flavor of what it is like to live in the world’s largest alpine valley, here on the backbone of North America. I invite all SLV experiencers to send in their stories to share with OSP readers. -Christopher O’Brien]

Hello Mr. O’Brien,

I have too many things to share. Most off the wall stories, but all true; I love reading what you share with your readers and so I wanted to share with you our reality here. I wish you could visit with more people here. I know people would attack you with their stories, as it seems like no one wants to share, thinking people think they’re crazy we’re not, [we] just have had a lot of ‘out of the ordinary’ things happen.

I’ll start with my own personal encounters / experiences and then I’ll include those of my other family or friends.

When I was just a little girl of maybe 5-6 years old (about 1970) or so I lived in Manassa. I awoke one night to a really strange thing going on in my room. There were sounds that resembled wind chimes blowing in the wind (lightly), and what looked like different sized ‘bubbles’ floating in the air. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s not that I could ‘see’ these so called ‘bubbles’ like you do when you blow bubbles (not bubble gum bubbles, but bubbles with the wand), but you know how they give this iridescent look, where you can see different colors in them, that was what I was looking at. The more I looked at them, the more they seemed to be different shapes and harder to make out. One of these ‘bubbles’ seemed to come over to where I was standing at the side of my bed and just hovered there near my face. It was almost like when you put your hand in a pond and move your fingers, it spreads out in ripples, you’re seeing this ‘thing’ that seemed to ‘ripple’ with the look of bubbles. Weird I know, how can I explain it? You would’ve had to have been there. The next thing I knew was I was waking up and it was morning. I don’t remember going back to bed or anything, but I knew I had been awakened and had watched this going on.

Then when I was in Jr. High, way back in the late 70’s, I was spending the night at my friends’ house and we were up late, she also lived in Manassa. We were laying on the bunk beds and looking out the window when all of a sudden there was this really big bright light that was over this field near her home. We at first thought it was a helicopter, because it seemed to go from one end of the field to the other end, back and forth, but there wasn’t any sound coming from it. As we were looking at it, all of a sudden we could see all of these other smaller lights that seemed to make a circle around this big light, like when you see a target and the bulls eye is in the center, that was the big light and then the rings around it were the smaller lights. Only one ring of smaller lights though’, maybe of 15-20 lights. I bet we watched it about 10 minutes or so and then we started talking again and seemed to forget about it.

Then in the mid 80’s, I was driving back from Antonito with my mom, my brother and my lil’ boy down what’s called Espinoza Lane. It is a paved road that you take the ‘back way’ from Manassa to Antonito. We were headed North towards Manassa and it was about 8-9:00 pm or so and I was just looking up at the sky and saw this ‘steel marble’ as I called it. It was like those marbles you played with that were metal or a ball bearing from a vehicle. That’s the look it had to it. It had to have been about over the Saguache area or so and the only reason I noticed it wasn’t that it had lights on it, but because the glow from the moon seemed to reflect off of it and I could then see it and the shape of it. What was really strange was that it was a perfect ball and had not one light on it anywhere. It was metallic and shiny. It had to have been massive for us to be able to see it from where we were! It was moving from the West toward the East. I then told my mother, “Mom look at that! What is that?!!” She was driving and looked up and hit her brakes. She then said, “What in the world?!! Oh my gosh what is that?!” We got out of the car and just as we did, this object completely stopped moving. I know it sounds absolutely crazy, especially being as far away as we were, but I swear! Just as we stopped and got out to look at it, it stopped too. My mom got very frightened and wanted to leave, so we got back in the car and just as she ‘sped off’, this thing did this really strange thing. It started moving very, very quickly and seemed to head our direction and then it made this zigzag move of some kind and went straight up and disappeared over the mountains we were near. We still talk about it. It was such a weird experience and scared us enough to of course never forget!

My mother spoke of a time that she and my father and a couple of friends had gone to a car show in Albuquerque. It was the early 1980’s. It was really late at night / early am as they were headed home and my mom was driving while everyone else was sleeping in their van. She said that she noticed this really bright light that was following her. They were in about Ojo Caliente, New Mexico by then. She thought at first that it was possibly an airplane or helicopter, but then saw that it was staying right with their vehicle and just above them. It had only one bright shiny light that was directed at them. She said that one of their friends woke up and started to come towards the front of the van and she told ‘em, “Look at this light, is that a helicopter?” He looked out the window and said, “No that is no helicopter!” She said that it followed them all the way until they hit the San Antone Mountain just outside of Antonito.

My ex brother-in-law told me a story of a very similar experience he had. He was coming back from New Mexico (about the mid 90’s) and he and his wife noticed a light that was just above their pickup that stayed right with them. He said that they started to feel very afraid and that the faster he drove, the faster it went to stay right with him. He said that this light stayed with him for over 90 miles until he also hit the San Antone Mountain.

I thought that their stories were almost identical, which made it kinda creepy to me.

My ex sister-in-law told us all a story about when she was younger and still living at home. So that would make it about the mid 90’s…

She and her family lived in Crestone and she and her sister went to baby sit up on Mt. Blanca for some people. She said that they were coming home about 2-3:00 am and they came around this corner and their lights shone across this ‘creature’ that was walking (like a man) across their road. She said as their car lights shone on it, it turned to look at them and it didn’t have any type of clothing on it, but was covered in what looked to be red scales. She said that its eyes glowed red as it turned to look their direction. She said it stood about 3-4 feet tall and slender. It ran off after it looked at them.

She said that it had horrified them so much that they refused to go back up in that area or ever baby sit for those people again.

My grandmother told of a story when my Uncle was a newborn babe. (About 1958) She had him sleeping in the bassinet in their living room and she had gotten up really early in the a.m. to check on him and there were several little ‘men’ standing around the bassinet. She said that they stood about 3 feet tall and were looking at the baby. She didn’t remember what they were wearing or any details, other than she kept saying they looked like little men…She said that it had really scared her and they had then moved the baby into their bed after that.

My sister’s husband just recently (in the past few months) had an experience where he and his coworkers were out getting some scrap metal North East of Alamosa and this ‘creature’ fell out of the metal that they were lifting up to load. He said that they all went over to look at it, as it was dead. They took pictures of it with their cell phones and it hit like wildfire! He ended up being able to bring it home (he is my neighbor here in La Jara) and we got to look at it. It looked like a skinless dog (mummified) with webbed upper and lower extremities. It was attached also from the shoulder area to the wrist, where the hands/paws or whatever in the world they were could not stretch all the way out. The front legs / arms were shorter than the back legs. It had fangs that overlapped each other and hung out onto the jaw line. A man we knew is a hunter and has skinned many coyotes said that it was no coyote. As the possible explanation was a mangy coyote. It wasn’t. After this creature was put in a plastic bag to be thrown it ended up with someone else who was curious and trying to figure out what it was. It has surfaced on the internet, literally with the title “What in the world is this creature?” It supposedly came from Ft. Collins, from Grand Junction, from who knows where. What was funny Mr. O’Brien was that it actually was found outside of Alamosa, by my brother in law and his coworkers! By many people here they believed it was a ‘Chupacabra’, I’m sure you’ve heard of them.

My best friend Michelle told me of an experience she had. She and her sister were on a double date together and they were driving down the highway that takes you from Manassa towards San Acacio / San Luis area. (Mid 1970’s) She said that her date said, “Oh my gosh look at that car coming up behind us! It’s going to hit us!!” She said that they turned around and looked and there was this light that was behind them and moving at such a high rate of speed that they just knew it was going to hit them. They sped up and were looking for a place to pull over, when they got to the open prairie before what’s called “Flat top” outside of Manassa and not far from the Rio Grande River, she said they pulled off the road and this what looked like an airplane, but very long, with lots of windows and no wings on it, came out from behind Flat Top and moved across the highway and stopped. Just as it stopped the light that had been coming behind them at a very fast speed met up with this object and then they took off together and disappeared in the sky. She swore by this. I had such strange things happen, I’ve never had any reason to doubt her or any of the other stories I’ve heard. It’s nice to share them with others who’ve had similar experiences, because too many people are afraid of the so called ‘unknown’ and knowing you’re not the only one to have experiences like that, I guess it not only makes it more real, but makes you feel more ‘sane’. Ha-ha

The hauntings, gosh that would take me forever. We’ve had so many things like that happen and know of others who have had the same things. Of course it’s real!

When I was in high school we lived in a house that was haunted. We lived in a 4 bedroom house and one of the rooms was used as a storage room. My room was next to this room and one night I went to get into bed and this ‘knocking’ started. I could hear it like something was knocking on the wall. I’d get up out of bed and as soon as I’d get to my door to open it and go see, it would stop. I’d crawl back in bed and it would start all over again. This went on for a long time that night. I finally went out and opened the door to the storage room and nothing was in there, ‘cept for our boxes.

As time went on, more things happened in this house…

I would be home alone and literally feel / see the couch sink as if someone was sitting on the couch next to me. I’d feel like my hair was full of static and my ‘arm hairs’ felt really weird, almost like they were standing straight up.

My mom had 2 experiences of being in bed and seeing a man. She said one time she saw this man coming down the hall toward the bedroom and without thinking thought it was my dad. She then realized that he was in bed with her. Another time she said that she woke up to see a man going through her chest of drawers like he was looking for something. Then he disappeared.

We found a tombstone under this house of a civil war soldier… We then started wondering if it was him. We didn’t know if someone had stolen the tombstone and put it under the house or how it had gotten there.

Without saying anything about this particular ‘haunting’, a friend of mine came from Montana to stay with me for 2 weeks. I had gone out and my parents had invited her to go to dinner with them. She had wanted to stay home and so she was alone for several hours in the house. When my parents got home she was really shaken up and told ‘em about how she had come out of the restroom and turned to go down the hall and felt someone behind her. She got very afraid and literally started praying. She said that she got into the living room and turned to see and there was what she described as an ‘outline’ of a man in a uniform. She told them, “Like a soldier or something.”

We knew then it had to be him.

It seemed like when my dad would get upset with my mother, we would ‘sense’ his presence more. You’d feel someone there and feel like he was ‘angry’ (if that makes any sense.) Like he was defensive of my mom.

We moved and years later a gal stopped by at a yard sale I was having and she asked me, “Sandy did you guys ever have anything weird happen in the house that I’m living in?” She was then living in that house. I looked at her and smiled and said, “Yes why? What’s happened with you?”

She went on to tell me similar experiences that they’d had and how it even got to the point one time of when she was going to Alamosa and she literally felt this ‘presence’ get in the car with her. She told it, “It’s okay that you’re coming with me, but we’re not liking that you’re scaring us. We can both live in the house in peace, but not if you’re going to frighten the kids.”

She said that one time her daughter had been sitting on her bed and she told her, “I don’t believe there’s a spirit here, if there were it would let me know it was here!” She said that he daughters bed lifted up and slammed into the floor, and that it had scared her half to death! I can imagine!

She made an identical comment to me in saying that they would really sense the presence when she and her husband were having a disagreement. She felt like he was protective of her.

It was strange that day as she had come to me to ask me if we’d ever had anything happen and I guess my telling her yes that we had, only made their life in that house more real.

Several years after living in that house, now married and with 5 kids we found ourselves living in another haunted house. This house was in Manassa as well. It seemed like it had an angry feeling with it. There was a lot of tension in our home and you never quite felt comfortable. I don’t know if that makes any sense. The original owners of the house had lost a son in horseback riding accident in the 60’s. The owners before us, the husband had been killed in a logging accident. We then bought the house.

I had 3 occasions of sitting in my living room and seeing a man walking through my kitchen into my daughters’ bedroom. Like my mothers experience in the past of thinking it was my dad, I thought this man was my husband. Also like my mother, I then realized he was not at home. 3 times this happened to me. He was tall, approx. 6’, slender, dark hair. I always saw him as I was watching television and I always saw him from the side, as he was walking down the hallway that separated the kitchen from one of the bedrooms.

We had experiences while living there of shutting our television off and getting to the end of the living room and almost to the kitchen when the TV would come back on. I’d then turn around and start walking back to the TV and it would shut off by itself. This happened too many times.

After our divorce, we sold the house. They were in the process of remodeling it and my best friend who lived across the street from this house told me that we should go see if we could look at the remodeling they were doing on it. The workers there allowed us to walk through…

As I entered the home, everything started spinning. I felt very nauseated and had a very heavy feeling, like someone had thrown a bag of cement on me. I turned to my friend and pleaded with her “Literally” to get me out of the house.

My mom made a comment to me after I told her what had happened. She said, “Sandy did you ever stop and think that maybe that spirit that was in the home was angry, because you had left and it was still there, and now the house was being changed?” No I hadn’t thought about it, but sure have wondered about it since then…

I have talked your ear off, like I said I was very good at. These just touch the beginning of so many strange and unusual things that go on here. I am only a minute fraction of what people talk about. We all seem to have something in common. The unexplained.

Do these sound off the wall? I think they do, strange thing is they’re all as real as they can get!

Let me know if you need details or want to talk sometime. I sure wanted to share with you.

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